Grayslake Teachers Asked To Take Pay Freeze

GRAYSLAKE, Ill. (CBS) — Teachers in Community Consolidated School District 46 in far north suburban Grayslake are being asked to take a pay freeze.

The board’s one-year offer, posted on the District 46 website, would give pay raises only to those teachers within three years of retirement. They would get raises of 5 percent; currently those teachers within four years of retirement get raises of 6 percent a year.

The offer also would freeze stipends for extracurricular and supervisory duties, and cut the fringe benefit flex payment by half. Instead, the board would give teachers a $1,500 one-time stipend.

The board said in the statement accompanying the offer, sent to the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board (IELRB), that federal funding and property tax revenues are down and that it lacks long-term borrowing capacity.

“The School District does not have any available long-term borrowing capacity with which to infuse much needed cash into its accounts,” the board said in its statement. “In fact, the School District already pays approximately $5.6 million in bond and interest payments per year.”

The IELRB is expected to make the union’s “last and best” offer public later this week.

Lake County Federation of Teachers officials said they would wait for the IELRB to make it documents public.